Boston Bruins: Predicting the Full-Season Stats for Each of Their Regulars

After amassing a modest 19 goals in their first 10 games of the season, the Boston Bruins have kicked monumental ice chips over the residual evidence of their Stanley Cup hangover with the NHL’s most explosive offense.

Currently averaging 3.47 goals per night after 34 outings, they are also producing on the power play at a rate that is 3.2 percentage points higher than their final total for the 2010-11 regular season.

If they were to translate their current 34-game pace to a full 82-game production rate, the Bruins could finish this year with at least 40 more goals than last season, including 15 extra power-play strikes.

Naturally, that will require a majority of their regular skaters―their top 12 forwards and top six defensemen―to keep up their own individual pace and a couple to build upon what they started in November. A few of the Bruins are inevitably bound to slow down their output, though likely not to an egregious extent, and not everyone will suit up for all of the remaining 48 games.

But assuming none of them miss significant time, here is an alphabetical estimate as to where each Boston skater’s output should be when the regular season wraps up.

Patrice Bergeron

Bergeron’s playmaking has been as consistent as ever. Even when the likes of linemate Tyler Seguin have dozed off, he still has yet to go more than three games at a time without an assist and has not had a pointless skid last any longer than two outings.

This is indubitably the best the Bruins have seen out of their longest-tenured skater since his pre-concussion days, and there is no cause to believe it won’t continue. By the end of this regular season, Bergeron can expect to double his goal total to 14 and to break the 50-assist plateau for a career year in that category.

Johnny Boychuk

Currently on pace for an 81-game transcript of 7-9-16, Boychuk has cooled off in the goal department, now nursing a 10-game drought and having beaten only one goalie with his blistering biscuit in his last 19 outings.

Nonetheless, if he stays healthy and picks the pace back up, this should be Boychuk’s first NHL season that features numbers comparable to those of his major junior and AHL days. He could be tinkering on double digits in terms of goals and pitch in as many as 15 assists.

Gregory Campbell

Fettered for the first 10 games en route to an O-fer October, the fourth-line center has since scraped out 3-6-9 totals in 21 appearances.

With as many as 48 outings yet to come, Campbell has plenty of time to triple that output to a season total of about 9-18-27.

Zdeno Chara

Chara was also particularly symptomatic of post-championship hangover in October, when he went pointless in eight of the first nine games.

More recently, he has thawed out his head and his twig well enough to have supplied six goals and four assists in his last 15 appearances. Of his 7-16-23 totals, five of the goals and 11 of the points have been picked up on the man-advantage.

With the worst of this season clearly behind him, Chara ought to start producing at a rate that will have him falling just shy of a career year in terms of both goals (19) and assists (37). But exceeding his previous career-high of 51 points is anything but a ludicrous proposition, especially now that he is helping to pilot an improved power-play brigade.

Joe Corvo

Corvo all but took the longest time to into Boston. But for the better part of the last two months, he has been taking shots and making plays at the rate the Bruins expected him to when they imported him over the summer.

So far, Corvo’s only two goals this year came in Columbus on Dec. 10, but if his history is any indication, he is good for one or two of those per month. Having put his career-worst drought behind him, he could bring his final season total to about seven strikes and tinker on the 30-assist plateau.

Andrew Ference

Having already missed two outings, Ference is on pace for an 80-game total of 5-30-35. But it should be noted that that pace is partially inflated by the six assists he compiled over the last six games before Christmas.

Still, with the team in general producing at a higher rate than they were in October, it is easy to envision Ference putting up data not seen on his transcript since he penned a 4-27-31 line with Calgary in 2003-04. This time, though, expect maybe one or two fewer assists and an extra goal or two.

Nathan Horton

Horton has not been egregiously inconsistent this year, never going more than three games without at least one point. On the other hand, he has had a few protracted stretches of scoreless outings interspersed with a solitary goal and/or assist.

Even so, dating back to the lockout, Horton has yet to go a full regular season without at least 20 goals. He is still in a good position to salvage that trend and to amass as many as 30 assists.

Chris Kelly

Kelly is impressively elevating his standards in his first full season as a Bruin. No need to wait for the other skate to drop and watch him outright fizzle in the homestretch by any means. But it is worth noting that of his 12 goals and 21 points, seven of those goals and 11 of those points came during a hot 13-game stretch in November.

Currently on pace for a final line of 29-21-50, something along the lines of 22-19-41 is more realistic for Kelly.

David Krejci

Krejci’s inconsistency continues to be a bother, especially since he has a first-line center label to live up to. But if you break down his season to date to a set of eight games apiece, you will find succeeding scoring lines of 1-0-1, 2-5-7, 2-5-7 and 2-4-6.

And as it happens, with a goal against Phoenix on Wednesday night, Krejci is now fostering his longest production streak of the season at four games. You can attribute some of that to the team-wide wrecking projects against Philadelphia (6-0) and Florida (8-0), but it still has to be a personal confidence-booster for Krejci.

He should get up to at least 15 or 16 goals and break into the low-to-mid 40s in the assist column before the final horn April 7.

Milan Lucic

Currently tied for third on the team with 12 goals, Lucic has had droughts lasting six, eight and seven games apiece. All of his strikes have come in pairs or bunches at a time, whether that’s two in one night or at least one in a succession of games.

Dating back to Nov. 30, Lucic seems to have found a new niche with three of his last four goals having been tallied on the power play. That brings his man-up production total to five goals on the year, already matching the career high he set for himself last season.

Depending on how reliable he continues to be on the power play and whether or not his line with Horton and Krejci can get a permanent grip on consistency, Lucic’s production ought to trend a little upward for the remainder of this year. Look for him to finish with about 28 goals and 35 assists.

Brad Marchand

Much like his rookie season, Marchand is filling up two balance bushels of goals and assists. The only difference is that he is now running into fewer and shorter funks as the season presses on. After a six-game episode of frostbite at the tail-end of October, he has gone no more than three games at a time without a point.

Looks like this isn’t going anywhere but up. Marchand should hit the lower 30s in both columns for a season total of roughly 65 points.

Adam McQuaid

The stay-at-home blueliner has his day job to attend to in fairly limited quantities of ice time. But he should be able to squeeze in a couple of more goals and a handful of helpers en route to about a 3-7-10 scoring transcript.

Daniel Paille

Paille recently tallied three goals in two games at Ottawa and Philadelphia, but preceded that with a seven-game goal-less skid, one of three protracted droughts on his game log for 2011-12 so far.

Paille has already missed four outings and is on pace for a 78-game total of 15 goals and five assists. Something closer to 12 goals and seven assists is closer to reality.

Rich Peverley

Commonly working with Kelly, his fellow February 2011 import, Peverley has had three separate four-game point-getting streaks in his first full season in Boston. The latest one of those streaks has been put on hold by his current injury, but not before he put up 2-5-7 totals over the four preceding outings.

Much like Bergeron and Krejci are to the two top lines, Peverley is his troika’s playmaking specialist with 19 assists, 18 of which have come since Nov. 1, for second-most on the team.

If he stays relatively consistent, you’re all but certainly looking at a breakthrough year. In fact, he will likely finish in the mid-teens under the “G” heading and somewhere in the mid-to-upper 40s in the way of assists. Even if Kelly slows his output down a touch during 5-on-5 play, Peverley is one of the many Bruins to be picking up his power-play productivity.

Benoit Pouliot

Hardly performing like a fourth overall draft choice in his Minnesota and Montreal days and into his first month with Boston, Pouliot has more recently cultivated five goals and eight points in his last 13 games.

Assuming that and his active four-game point streak is less of a fluke and more of him fitting into and feeding off of a deep, balanced offense, a brush with the 20-goal plateau and the 30-point range is more than possible.

Tyler Seguin

Once on pace to tally 50 or more goals by season’s end, Seguin has been following one letdown of a pattern since mid-November. He will go four games without tuning the mesh, tally one goal in the fifth game and repeat that cycle. This has meant tallying only three biscuits in his last 18 appearances after scoring 11 in his first 15.

For the second half of his sophomore campaign, Seguin will likely trend somewhere between the two extremes with a minimal tilt in the more productive direction. Considering what he has amassed so far and what he is capable of, a bare minimum of 32 goals and 72 points sounds right, but any more than 35 strikes is wishful thinking for this season.

Dennis Seidenberg

Seidenberg went the first 32 games of this season without a goal, but is now suddenly on a two-game striking streak.

Now that he has finally broken his ice under the “G” heading, the burly blueliner is bound to sprinkle on a few more before season’s end while also setting up his share. At the rate he has produced more recently, Seidenberg could bag up to six goals and 20 helpers.

Shawn Thornton

The resident enforcer appeared to have surrendered any hope of following up on his career year (10-10-20) from last season when he, like his linemate Campbell, had a completely barren October.

But now that he has seen the worst of his hangover, Thornton should join in Boston’s league-leading offense enough to have about five or six goals and between 11 and 14 assists.